Blazing Ice

by John H. Wright

  Below Brian’s note to Steve, I found my name again. This time Erick Chiang addressed Dave Bresnahan. I knew of Erick Chiang, but I could think of no reason he would know me.

  David—FYI and planning for John Wright. I have forwarded the message to Mario to make sure that he is aware of the plan. Let me know which option is preferable.

  I think we will have to get John to and from TNB.—Erick

  The aspen leaves on our mountainsides were turning autumn gold and red. Though the sun warmed our south facing valley, inside we wore sweaters. Soon I’d leave my family for winter’s work. This morning my wife joined me at the computer.

  At the bottom of the e-mail string was a lengthy note from Patrice Godon, head of the Technical Department, French Polar Institute, to Erick Chiang, NSF Office of Polar Programs. Godon recognized an agreement in which the USAP would provide an observer-participant for the French traverses. He offered three scheduling options for the then coming austral summer, November through February, to accommodate that observer-participant.

  “Apparently I’m being considered for that observer-participant role. That’s exciting,” I told my wife.

  “And you love traversing, honey. What does an observer-participant do?” She met the prospect enthusiastically.

  This was the first I’d heard anything about imminent plans for the USAP traverse development. Brooks Montgomery, a USAP mountaineer, had joined a French-Italian traverse in 1995 that ran between those same two places. He’d retrieved a payload package from a downed research balloon that dropped near the French route. His trip log described their daily routine, progress, their equipment to some extent, and a bit about the terrain. He told of long stretches of rough ground, rough enough that he didn’t want to go again.

  “And you want to do it?” my wife asked.

  “Well, yeah. I’ve never been to those places.”

  “But you’re going down to finish the tunnel. Can you do both?”

  Poised to complete the tunnel job that year, I found myself torn between tunneling and traversing. We studied Godon’s schedules. After a couple days soul searching, I wrote back to Steve:

  I have read your sending and agree that Patrice Godon’s Option 3 would be optimal for an observer to get the most return in helpful information for the USAP.

  As to Brian’s question: No, I did not know I was going anywhere. On August 02, I accepted the contract to complete the SPole Tunnel project. The SPole Tunnel Project—starting in November—will be in full swing during the December to early February dates put forth in the three options. “Full swing” historically has not meant smooth operations, rather a succession of crises. My concerns for the well-being of the crew, as well as for the successful completion of the project, are heightened. And I take my responsibility for the crew’s safety personally.

  Therefore, I do not project my availability to participate on the French traverses. This is a difficult pill to swallow for it is my heart’s desire to participate in a meaningful way in building the USAP’s surface traverse capability.—John

  That same day, Steve returned a thoughtful consolation:

  I understand the position you are in quite well. It is often ironic that the reason one is offered these opportunities is because one is responsible, and that responsibility often precludes one’s participation in the opportunity. Brian Stone was sorry to hear that you are unavailable. He wanted me to pass along the consensus at NSF that you are our best resource for traverse issues and that they will keep you in mind as other opportunities arise.—Steve

  I never got to go on the French traverse, but I did get to go to France.

  Like traverses of other nations, the French link a coastal facility to an inland station. In this case, their link runs between Cape Prud’homme/Dumont D’Urville to Dome C, six hundred miles inland on the Polar Plateau. The United States hoped to establish a similar link across the one thousand miles between McMurdo and South Pole Station.

  The USAP had no solutions at the start and little time in its three-year schedule to cycle trial with error. We had to specify and purchase the traverse fleet for use in the third year before we ever took to the field in the first. French solutions became our starting point.

  In June 2002, five of us converged on Brest, France. “Us” included Dave Bresnahan of NSF, George Blaisdell and Jason Weale—both engineers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory—and Ralph Horak and me, both contract employees for the support contractor. Ahead of us lay two days of conferences with Patrice Godon, leader of the French traverse.

  Besides me, Dave was the only one who wore a beard. His was salt and pepper. Mine was considerably whiter. Both were neatly trimmed. Dave was a stern looking character with bushy eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. He stood as tall as me, often intimidating folks at their first encounter. I never found him intimidating.

  Ralph, a Yankee from New Hampshire, was my old traverse buddy. He was a portly fellow, and dry-witted. We took turns playing the straight man off one another, and that always made me smile. When I started the tunnel job at Pole, I turned the sea ice traverse business over to Ralph. We’d spent one memorable day stuck out on the sea ice. A sharp piece of it flattened a six-foot balloon tire on our fifteen-ton Delta truck. While we snoozed in the cab, waiting hours for a helicopter to fly us a spare, I broke the silence:

  “Ralph, all my adult my life I’ve had but one birthday wish. And that is to be left completely alone on that day, to see no human being, and to spend the day contemplating the meaning of life and my place in it.”

  “That so?” Ralph yawned.

  “That is so. Ralph, today is my birthday. And this is the closest I have ever come to realizing my wish. Here, on the frozen surface of McMurdo Sound, miles from anybody, I am stuck in this cab with you!”

  “Better luck next year.”

  Ralph chuckled. He didn’t offer to get out of the cab.

  Ralph and another traverse buddy, Steve Carr from Port Townsend, Washington, would join the French traverses in the coming season as observer-participants. Together, they’d report their lessons learned to all of us. Meanwhile, I’d be occupied with crossing the Shear Zone.

  Patrice Godon met our group at the Brest airport and drove us across town to the offices of the French Polar Institute. Here was a long, modern two-story building with plenty of windows, perched atop a low hill surrounded by lush, green foliage. Maritime scents filled the air.

  Patrice was an athletic man of middle age, clean-shaven, poker-faced, and ruggedly handsome. He ushered us into a second floor conference room where we seated ourselves around a long table. Scale models of sleds and other devices decorated the table top.

  Patrice spoke English well from an agenda he’d already prepared. He included a summary proposal to deliver fuel to South Pole Station. His dogleg traverse, beginning at Dumont d’Urville and running by Dome C, took Ralph and me by surprise. Supplying Pole was our mission.

  Dave later explained that Erick Chiang had asked Patrice to prepare a study of the option. It was not entirely a cold pitch. But as Dave pointed out, Dumont D’Urville and Cape Prudhomme didn’t have the infrastructure to support such an operation.

  “Then I trust he got paid for his study,” I remarked. “They’d have to drag all that fuel uphill right away, and then go another several hundred miles past Dome C. It’d be longer than the USAP route. That’s a lot more fuel burned and a lot less fuel delivered for the effort.”

  “I know, I know,” Dave shrugged.

  We enjoyed a catered lunch with Bordeaux wine in the same conference room we’d occupied all morning. After lunch, Patrice described terrain problems they faced on their route and the novel solutions they applied to them. To deal with rough or undulating surfaces, they installed shock absorbing systems on their sleds, and they replaced traditional steel hinges with elastomeric bushings.

  The French ran two-thirds of their traverse on the Polar plateau. That’s where Brooks to
ld of rough ground over sastrugi—long, wind-sculpted forms in dense, hard snow. Brooks reported they ran a dozing blade ahead of their fleet. They still did according to Patrice. The blade rough-leveled the snow, pushing it into a berm on the downwind side of their road.

  The berm became a snowdrift catcher. Every time they pushed new drift snow against the old berm, their freshly plowed road crept gradually upwind. That meant their heavy tractors following the blade always tracked on virgin snow.

  The USAP had not traversed heavy sastrugi in years. We really didn’t know how. Would we need a forerunner blade, too? Around McMurdo, we dealt with sea-level snow on the ice shelves. We learned to get on top and stay on top of the snow. We dragged grooming equipment behind us. Slowly we built a stronger, compacted road under us.

  The years-old berm on the French road became their trail marker. But in flat light the berm was impossible to see. So the French installed forward-looking stadium lights, little suns atop their tractors, to illuminate it. When an operator wore special goggles fitted with yellow lenses, the berm appeared through the white-out. Our project had no proven route in front of it, hence no berm. For the time being we’d use flags on bamboo poles to mark our way.

  “Patrice, how much does the ice under your road move?” I asked, awkwardly trying to overcome our language barrier.

  Patrice looked at me questioningly, then over to George for help. He’d known George for several years.

  George stepped up. A broad-shouldered, lean, athletic fellow himself, his tow-headed crew-cut and aquiline aspect suggested a scrapper. But his musical diction put one at ease. “John is asking about glacier and ice movement along your route, Patrice. Do you know how much your road moves as a result of the movement of the ice on which it is built?”

  Patrice showed us a map of a former route from Dumont D’Urville to Dome C. Overlying the old route was the trace of their current one, which showed they had blazed some short cuts. I made a mental note: “meaning lost in translation.”

  “How about crevasses along your route, Patrice?” I asked on a slightly different tack. Ice movement often caused crevassing.

  “We have a few at the start of the climb out of Dumont d’Urville, but that’s all. Nowhere else,” Patrice allowed.

  “And how do you know they are there, and nowhere else?”

  “Because we see them with our eyes,” Patrice answered, nonplussed.

  Again I let it go, wondering what manner of glaciological study might have been applied to selecting their route. They had established it long before ground penetrating radar was available.

  Our discussion turned to their sled fleet: cargo sleds; fuel tank sleds; and berthing, galley, and energy-production sleds. The USAP had none of these things. Every one of them would have to be designed, specified, shopped, built, and delivered. We discussed which sleds worked for the French and which needed improvement. Patrice gave us construction drawings for their sled fleet.

  The second day covered operations. Patrice emphasized the importance of personal comforts and cleanliness for the crew. Ralph and I raised eyebrows to one another in agreement. Our traverses around McMurdo had been sixty-mile day trips to well-provisioned outposts. Neither of us could imagine what day-after-day might be like on a long traverse. We didn’t want to spend the end of each day setting up tents and camping on the snow.

  Patrice gave me a crew roster and duty list. “You carry a physician, a full medical doctor … is that your standard practice, or is this one who just happened to be available?” I asked.

  “Yes … we always bring a physician.”

  “And what does he do when he is not doctoring?”

  With a shrug of his shoulders, arms outspread and palms upturned, he answered with a heavy accent, “We train him to drive a tractor, and he drives a tractor.”

  I smiled. That would be difficult for human resources. But should we have a doctor, too? With all our aircraft available in the summer, and our extraordinary search-and-rescue capability, could we make do with a paramedic instead?

  “And you have no designated cook?” I looked at him questioningly.

  Patrice’s face became animated for the first time. “Ah! Never again will I hire a cook! They are temperamental! All they do is throw flour around the kitchen!”

  Frenchmen were famously finicky about food, yet Patrice adamantly refused to have a cook. A Tasmanian caterer prepared their frozen meals in bulk. They pulled the day’s meals from cold storage every morning, thawed them inside their galley module, then heated them at meal times. TV dinners would not be particularly welcome with our crew, so I asked Patrice for a sample menu.

  “Pretty good,” I looked up from the menu to Dave. “Fascinating … no cook … that opens up a whole bunk space. Maybe a second heavy mechanic? Maybe a surveyor. Maybe a mountaineer?”

  The first evening in Brest, we five Americans found ourselves strolling its pleasant streets, checking out restaurants for exciting menus.

  George and Jason paired together for a while. Jason, a sharp young engineer newly on board at CRREL, was also new to me. George had Jason in mind as CRREL’s technical contact in support of our project. The scope of CRREL’s opportunity occupied their discussion. Jason had never been to the Ice. For that matter, neither George nor Jason, nor even Dave had ever traversed.

  Dave strolled apart, deep in thought. I commented to Ralph: “You know … Patrice has been there. We’re hearing from a guy who’s fought his way down the trail.”

  Ralph and I had been on some tough traverses. We shared an admiration for Patrice because we recognized his struggle. Ralph added, “When things are going good, it’s all good. When it hits the fan, it really hits it. I wonder if these other guys understand that you’re on twenty-four hours a day? That saps you. You know it.”

  I did know it. And I’d been meaning to talk that up with Dave. He strolled ahead of us across a broad plaza decked with granite-gray flagstones, bronze statuary, and brass handrails leading up stone stairsteps. High summer at Brest’s northern latitude brought full sunshine at this late hour. I caught up from behind, leaving Ralph so Dave didn’t feel we were ganging up.

  “Dave, you and George worked up the feasibility study that launched the current project. Do you remember the section that dealt with shift cycles and hours of work?”

  They’d concluded that the best shift cycle ran twelve hours on and twelve hours off. Better than twenty-four hours around the clock, hot-bunking multiple crews. Better than two shorter shifts back-to-back. The standard work contract on the Ice called for six nine-hour days per week. We’d have to pay extra for daily twelves. I wouldn’t depend on the goodness of dedicated hearts to give it up. And I needed good people, especially when we were getting started.

  “What are you thinking?” Dave reserved judgment.

  “I don’t know yet how to manage this with the support contractor, but I do know that if we don’t pay for the extra time, then all I’m going to give you is six nines on the trail.”

  Dave asked about weekends and holidays. I’d stay silent on those and make them field calls. We’d all want to make hay when the sun was shining, but if weather or breakdown stopped us, I’d call break.

  “What do you need from me?” he asked, pausing momentarily, his eyebrows knitting.

  “Your support for winning appropriate pay for twelve-hour shifts. I don’t know how pinche NSF would be about that.” I spoke the latter with an accent of Mexico.

  “NSF won’t be that way if your request is reasonable. See what you come up with out of your own offices and make a proposal. I’ll support you.”

  The pay hike didn’t come that first year crossing the Shear Zone, so we put in nines. The hike came the next year, and we launched our fleet with twelves.

  Our berthing and energy production sleds came straight from French plans. We modified their fuel tank sled with a longer but smaller diameter cylinder. For the same three thousand gallon capacity, we both lowered the sled’s center of gravi
ty and improved its stability. The French elastomeric bushings, which were actually bridge support components that accommodated structural squirm, found their way into our fleet in abundance.

  I never saw Patrice again, but over the years we corresponded frequently. We exchanged my route notes and operations reports for his annual traverse summaries. My heart broke when Patrice suffered a mishap on the trail. I cheered when they commissioned Concordia Station at Dome C. Patrice’s traverse delivered all that material.

  On our own trail, I often wondered, “How would the French handle this particular problem?” Sometimes I found an answer.

  PART II.

  CREVASSES, SWAMPS, AND DISAPPOINTMENT

  5 Crossing the Shear Zone—Year One

  October 31, 2002. Five souls stood on the snow beside a ten-foot-tall wooden post. Two upright fifty-five gallon drums flanked the post. Carved deeply into its top were the letters G, A, and W.

  “GAW” stood for Grid A West, a theoretical relic of the SPIT work. Three miles east of GAW stood another post with two more black drums next to it. That was HFS. Home Free South. Two weeks before, a helicopter flew us out from McMurdo to plant these posts. The helicopter jumped us safely over the ground between them.

  Between GAW and HFS lay the McMurdo Shear Zone: badlands of hidden crevasses wide enough to swallow a bulldozer. Linda went down in one of them twelve years before.

  The ground toward HFS looked identical to the ground we’d crossed getting to GAW: a featureless plain of white, flat as a pancake. From the helicopter, we saw no gaping fissures in its unbroken surface. The crevasses, if they were there, were bridged over with snow.

  We’d flagged a twenty-three-mile route from McMurdo’s Williams Field skiway to GAW. That was easy. Our radar never saw a crevasse. We staged our gear over the route many times. We radared a safe perimeter just short of GAW, flagged it off, and built our tent camp within it.